Given modern distractions, the need to understand Islam better has never been more urgent. Through this forum we can share ideas and hopefully promote the true spirit of Islam which calls for peace, justice, tolerance, inclusiveness and diversity.

We may think the charged relationship between science and religion is mainly a problem for Christian fundamentalists, but modern science is also under fire in the Muslim world. Islamic creationist movements are gaining momentum, and growing numbers of Muslims now look to the Quran itself for revelations about science.

Science in Muslim societies already lags far behind the scientific achievements of the West, but what adds a fair amount of contemporary angst is that Islamic civilization was once the unrivaled center of science and philosophy. What's more, Islam's "golden age" flourished while Europe was mired in the Dark Ages.

This history raises a troubling question: What caused the decline of science in the Muslim world?

Now, a small but emerging group of scholars is taking a new look at the relationship between Islam and science. Many have personal roots in Muslim or Arab cultures. While some are observant Muslims and others are nonbelievers, they share a commitment to speak out—in books, blogs, and public lectures—in defense of science. If they have a common message, it's the conviction that there's no inherent conflict between Islam and science.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was still a young man when the Assassins made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

His hometown had been devastated by Mongol armies, and so, early in the 13th century, al-Tusi, a promising astronomer and philosopher, came to dwell in the legendary fortress city of Alamut in the mountains of northern Persia.

He lived among a heretical and secretive sect of Shiite Muslims, whose members practiced political murder as a tactic and were dubbed hashishinn, legend has it, because of their use of hashish.

Although al-Tusi later said he had been held in Alamut against his will, the library there was renowned for its excellence, and al-Tusi thrived there, publishing works on astronomy, ethics, mathematics and philosophy that marked him as one of the great intellectuals of his age.

But when the armies of Halagu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, massed outside the city in 1256, al-Tusi had little trouble deciding where his loyalties lay. He joined Halagu and accompanied him to Baghdad, which fell in 1258. The grateful Halagu built him an observatory at Maragha, in what is now northwestern Iran.

Al-Tusi's deftness and ideological flexibility in pursuit of the resources to do science paid off. The road to modern astronomy, scholars say, leads through the work that he and his followers performed at Maragha and Alamut in the 13th and 14th centuries. It is a road that winds from Athens to Alexandria, Baghdad, Damascus and Córdoba, through the palaces of caliphs and the basement laboratories of alchemists, and it was traveled not just by astronomy but by all science.

Commanded by the Koran to seek knowledge and read nature for signs of the Creator, and inspired by a treasure trove of ancient Greek learning, Muslims created a society that in the Middle Ages was the scientific center of the world. The Arabic language was synonymous with learning and science for 500 hundred years, a golden age that can count among its credits the precursors to modern universities, algebra, the names of the stars and even the notion of science as an empirical inquiry.

''Nothing in Europe could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600,'' said Dr. Jamil Ragep, a professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma.

It was the infusion of this knowledge into Western Europe, historians say, that fueled the Renaissance and the scientific revolution.

The noble Quran is full of mind-boggling scientific facts on astronomy and the creation of the universe, biology and the origin of life, embryology, human physiology, physics, psychology, oceanology, etc.,etc. and the fact that these were recorded by an unlettered soul in a desert 1400 years ago is enough to change the heart of anyone who is in honest search of the truth. The later course of the early Muslims into the realm of science and their subsequent reasearches, discoveries and achievements were solely inspired and kindled by these many ayats on scientific facts in the Quran. Its a marvellous and awe-inspiring experience to read these scientific facts and one cannot resist praising the creator and his revelation.

Here is another musing of our esteemed Quranic and Arabic scholar br. porus.

I will be bringing these out from time to time. I got nothing better to do.

Quran consists of words first spoken by Muhammad. He got these words from an angel.

In the United States, there are a number of individuals who utter words that they say come from their spirit guides. Esther Hicks channels her guide Abraham. Neale Donald Walsch has written a number of very popular books which he claims to have been dictated to him by God. These are 'Conversations with God' series. The latter are full of great lessons very clearly delivered.

Compared to Quran, they are a model of clarity.

There is not a single ayah in the Quran or a verse in any other scripture in the world that will provide a convincing proof that it is not the words of human beings.

I personally think that their works are more helpful to an average person than the Quran in the lessons they offer.

Walsch is not, and does not claim to be, infallible. His books are easy to read. There are no muqatta'at in them. No mysterious writings. No false science. Nothing like 'milk is secreted from abdomen of cows from between their shit and blood' (16:66).

According to porus, Quran is a book of false science (16:66), a book that is written by a human and not a revelation from God.

Vast majority of mankind do not believe that that are words of God. Devout Muslims offer two proofs:

1. Muhammad, a very honest person, says the words are from God. Muslims believe Muhammad.
2. The 'proof' that Quran is the words of God are in the 'miraculous' nature of the language of the Quran. Miracle consists of inimitabilty of the Quran, its linguistic structure, its very economical use of Arabic etc. Vast majority of Muslims cannot demonstrate these features of the Quran.

Some Muslims will see the demonstrations of the discoveries of modern science reflected in the verses of the Quran. They are proof that since Quran foreltold these discoveries, Quran could not have been composed by a human. No Quranic scholars of repute will advance these arguments.

16:6 is indeed false science. As is the claim that human can be born of a virgin, or can be constructed from dust in several days, or that the universe consists of earth and seven skies. It is false science as we know science today. Science, unlike Quran, does not claim to be the ultimate 'Truth'.

Quran is ambiguous. It says so itself. It has ambiguous verses but does not tell you which ones they are. It says God has purified Ahlul Bayt, but does not state who they are in an unambiguous fashion. It says obey Ulul Amr but fails to identify who they are. This has led to endless sectarian strife in Islam.

Vast majority of the world's people do not accept Bible to be the word of God. Bible cannot offer any proof that its is from God. Christians believe it is from God. Some Christians see science having been confirmed by Bible in its many verses. This is their proof that they are the words of God.

Vast majority of the world's people do not accept that Hindu scriptures are a gift of God to mankind. They do not offer any proof. Hindus believe they are from God. Some Hindus see modern science as having been presented fully in their scriptures. This is their proof that they are from God.

Porous wrote :Quran does not offer any proof that they are words of God.

Quran simply states that they are words of God.

Its a most dumb, unintelligent and stupid statement and with this level of IQ , no wonder that the vast matter and substance which glistens with divinity and has changed the hearts of countless non-Muslims across the globe in the contemporary age and down the ages, comes across to you as "words of a human". Rest assured that to be able to comprehend the depth of the verses and to know that they are the words of God, you need to elevate your intelligence which, I doubt you could attain in this lifetime.

According to you, how should the Quran offer a proof that its the word of God?
A voice should come out of it everytime one opens it ?- POROUS,THIS BOOK IS MY WORD AND KINDLY BELIEVE IN IT.
Or a divine hand should pop out of the cover page in poltergeist fashion and cuddle your cheeks ?

When you open out "A midsummer night's dream", or "Romeo and Juliet" or "Twelfth night" , whats the guarentee and the proof that its written by Shakespeare ? You believe so because the storyline, the language, the lucidity and contents could have been written only by Shakespeare as his substance is inimitable.
Boss, the verse below is one of the several hundred which gives one a goose-flesh upon reading , and when you read it with a mind which is rententious and not porous, let alone disbelieving it as a word of God, you will do a thousand sajdas in penitence of your folly.

" If there were a Quran with which mountains were moved,or the Earth were cloven asunder, or the dead were made to speak ( this would be the one ). But truly, the command is with Allah in all things. Do not the believers know that had Allah willed, he would have guided all mankind ( to the right). But the unbelievers- never will disaster cease to seize them for their deeds, or to settle close to their homes until the promise of Allah will come to pass, for,verily,Allah will not fail in His promise" ( 13:31)

I read somewhere you calling 2 members here as resident wahabbis and questioned their participation here but with your mindset you cease to be a Muslim itself so one is constrained to raise the same question about you, because all said and done, the premier qualification for a shia and a bohra too is belief in Allah and his holy book Quran as His word. I have to ask the same of the gentlemen who have liked your posts especially br.Grayson whose name too suggests somewhat shady convictions.

The wonder is that despite the lack of evidence people have believed in God for thousands of years. They do that on 'faith', or more likely, because they are brainwashed into believing in Him in infancy.

I agree that you are not a Muslim if you do not surrender to God. However, all I have said is that there is no proof of or for existence of God. I have not said anything about my own beliefs and faith. That, I do not discuss and never have on this forum.

No one is saying Romeo and Juliet is a word of God. People have disagreed about its authorship for centuries. However People do not fight, and fight to kill, over its authorship or its interpretation. False analogy.

God speaks in a booming voice from the sky, much like he did when he talked to Moses in the movie ‘The Ten Commandments”, to all the peoples of the earth, who would hear his message simultaneously in their own languages. He declares that his scriptures will suddenly appear on their dinner table; just so that they do not miss it when they get their meals. The scriptures will be in each person's native language and there will be enough copies for all over the age of seven. Then at each person’s seventh birthday, he will speak to them and their copy will appear on their dinner table.

God should speak at least once a day so people don't miss his message, say at 8:00 pm local time, in each time zone.

There will still be a porus or two who would not be satisfied if it can be shown that humans can arrange such a miracle!!!

and this

I think this is better. I do not think that humans can arrange this. God declares that on April 1, 2010, he will split the moon into two hemispheres. He would locate them on opposite sides of its current orbit. All humans can then see two hemispherical moons every day. But he must declare first in a booming voice.

There will be clear advantages. There will be no tides........we can have 2 days of Eid......and. to anajmi's eternal satisfaction, everyone will be a believer...

I have not said anything about my own beliefs and faith. That, I do not discuss and never have on this forum.

He doesn't have to. Have I ever said on this forum that I am a Wahhabi? No. Infact, I have even denied being a Wahhabi. But people still say that I am a Wahhabi. Based upon what? Based upon some of my posts and erroneous conclusions. Similarly, anyone's beliefs and faith can be established either wrongly or rightly. No one here can actually prove that I am a Wahhabi. But that doesn't stop them from calling me one does it? Similarly if I were to call porus an idol worshipper, it would be ok within the same parameters. No one can prove it, but then, who needs to?

When learning about the Muslim scholars of the past, it is easy to be amazed by their brilliance, accomplishments, and contributions to the modern world. Each provided a lasting legacy that changed the world in their time and today. One scientist in particular stands far above the rest. He is Ibn al-Haytham, the great polymath who lived from 965 to 1040.

He was born in the Iraqi city of Basra during the Abbasid Caliphate. He came about 100 years after the establishment of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Undoubtedly the culture of learning and advancement present in the Muslim world at that time had a great impact on him from an early age. He studied Islamic sciences and soon became a mayor of the city of Basra. During this time, he continued to study, focusing on sciences and other empirical subjects. His big break, however, would come in another part of the Muslim world.

Ibn al-Haytham in Egypt

During his time as mayor of Basra, the Fatimid rival caliph in Egypt al-Hakim (the Fatimids were Ismaili Shias who rejected the caliphate of the Sunni Abbasids in Iraq) heard of an idea that Ibn al-Haytham had to dam the Nile. Al-Hakim was a man of contradictions. Although he was the leader of the heretical Ismaili branch of Shiism that most scholars of the day completely rejected, he opened up his domain to anyone who could benefit it. Al-Hakim invited Ibn al-Haytham to come to Egypt to attempt his radical idea to dam the Nile. After travelling down the Nile to see where a potential dam could be built, he realized his plan could not go into effect with the technology of the day. There happened to be one problem: al-Hakim was known to be act irrationally ruthless, and acted quite insane on occasion. In order to escape some kind of punishment, Ibn al-Haytham pretended to be even more insane than al-Hakim himself! This daring idea saved him from excecution, but placed him under house arrest in Cairo for the remainder of al-Hakim’s life – 10 years.

Those 10 years didn’t even seem as punishment to the brilliant scientist. During this time, he got the peace and quiet he wanted to pursue his research. During this time, he dived into the study of light. He wanted to understand what light is, how it works, and how humans see objects. Although what he studied and discovered was truly revolutionary, the way he researched was one of his biggest contributions.

The Scientific Method

Today, it is understood to students of science that everything must be proven. You cannot make claims about scientific theories based on assumption without experimentation. Before Ibn al-Haytham, that was not the case. The ancient Greek philosophies of science still held weight. The Greeks believed that scientific fact can be discovered through reason, or simply attributed to the actions of the gods. Ibn al-Haytham knew better. He was the first scientist in history to insist that everything be proven through a given method for discovering new information – the scientific method.

Western textbooks today usually give little information about the history of the scientific method. Usually the ancient Greek philosophies are mentioned, followed by the “revolutionary” work of Roger Bacon, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton. The truth that is forgotten is that those European scholars stood on the shoulders of Ibn al-Haytham (and other Muslim scientists). Without his ideas about proving scientific theories, we may still be living in a time when speculation, superstition, and unproven myths are the basis of science.

The Book of Optics

Using his revolutionary scientific method, Ibn al-Haytham takes leaps and bounds into the field of optics. In his book, The Book of Optics, he was the first to disprove the ancient Greek idea that light comes out of the eye, bounces off objects, and comes back to the eye. He delved further into the way the eye itself works. Using dissections and the knowledge of previous scholars, he was able to begin to explain how light enters the eye, is focused, and is projected to the back of the eye.

In a similar way, he is the first to study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera. The concept of a pinhole camera is simple: a box with a tiny hole on one side is able to project an image of whatever is outside onto a side of the box on the inside. Those familiar with the way modern cameras work will notice that that is how cameras work in general, but today with the addition of lenses. Ibn al-Haytham was able to build these pinhole cameras hundreds of years before the modern development of photography as we know it.

He also studied the way light is affected when moving through a medium such as water or gasses. From this, he was able to explain why the sky changes color at twilight (the sun’s rays hit the atmosphere at an angle, causing refraction). From this, he was able to calculate the depth of the earth’s atmosphere, 1000 years before it would be proven by spaceflight.

The translation of The Book of Optics had a huge impact on Europe. From it, later European scholars were able to build the same devices as he did, and understand the way light works. From this, such important things as eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, and cameras were developed.

Beyond Light

As if revolutionizing the way humanity understands light and leading to the development of things we can’t live without in the 2000s wasn’t enough, Ibn al-Haytham also pioneered in other fields.

In 1020s and 1030s, he wrote numerous books on astronomy. He wrote about the mistakes of the Ptolemaic model of how the stars and planets move and provided a more realistic view of the way the universe works (although he knew the earth to be a sphere, he stuck to the ancient Greek idea that the earth was the center of the universe).

He completely refuted astrology as a scientific subject. Continuing with his firm belief scientific ideas needing to be proven, he came to the conclusion that the ideas of astrology were not rooted in any type of science, but in the thoughts and feelings of astrologers. He also noted that astrology directly contradicts one of the main ideas of Islam – that God is the cause of all things, not astronomical bodies.

He had a great influence on Isaac Newton, who was aware of Ibn al-Haytham’s works. He studied the basis of calculus, which would later lead to the engineering formulas and methods used today. He also wrote about the laws governing the movement of bodies (later known as Newton’s 3 laws of motion) and the attraction between two bodies – gravity. It was not, in fact, the apple that fell from the tree that told Newton about gravity, but the books of Ibn al-Haytham.

Since he was also trained in the traditional Islamic sciences, he also wrote on how to use empirical methods to disprove a false prophet, and how to use math to calculate the prayer direction towards Makkah.

In a precursor to modern psychology, he researched the effect music therapy can have on humans and animals.

Legacy

The list of accomplishments and contributions of Ibn al-Haytham goes on and on. The truly amazing thing is that he wrote over 200 books, but only around 50 have survived till today. What he discovered that we do not even know about probably far outshines even the amazing works that have made it to the present day.

Unfortunately, his contributions have been overlooked since his death. While he was never someone who cared for the fame and prestige that came with being a great scholar, the unawareness today’s world has about his contributions is unsettling. When his books were translated into Latin as the Spanish conquered Muslim lands in the Iberian Peninsula, he was not referred to by his name, but rather as “Alhazen”. The practice of changing the names of great Muslim scholars to more European sounding names was common in the European Renaissance, as a means to discredit Muslims and erase their contributions to Christian Europe.

Regardless, his brilliant mind inspired countless others who stood on his shoulders. It is not a stretch to say that without his research, the modern world of science that we know today would not exist.

No one is saying Romeo and Juliet is a word of God. People have disagreed about its authorship for centuries. However People do not fight, and fight to kill, over its authorship or its interpretation. False analogy.

And that is because with Romeo and Juliet, nothing is at stake. However, if Romeo and Juliet were determined to have been written by Walsch and not Shakespeare, who'd give a damn? The Quran however, is different, people's faith, their lives, their livelihood, their living and their dying depends on it. People defend even a little of that which belongs to them, then why won't they die or kill for that which represents everything for them from their birth to death? To say people should treat the Quran like Romeo and Juliet is naïve. The Quran is not ambiguous. The Quran is pretty clear where it needs to be.

It says God has purified Ahlul Bayt, but does not state who they are in an unambiguous fashion.

Actually, the Quran is pretty clear who the Ahlul Bayt are. It is people who need the Quran to conform to their beliefs that are the ones that need the Quran to be ambiguous. Ambiguous so they can twist it to their own misinterpretations. Give ayahs 33:32 and 33:33 to any 10 year old who knows Arabic or the translation to one who does not, and I guarantee you that 10 out of 10 times they will pick the wives as the Ahlul Bayt. However, once these kids are brainwashed, then the Quran becomes ambiguous to them as it has become to br. porus!!

It has ambiguous verses but does not tell you which ones they are.

You have to consider the bigger picture. The Quran was revealed 1400 years ago. A lot of what we know now wasn't known then. One of the miracles of Quran is that it is supposed to stand the test of time. Some verses which were ambiguous then, have become clear now. Verses which are ambiguous now may become clear later on and some verses will become clear only on the day of judgment. Hence the Quran made it clear for all of us that we aren't supposed to understand all of it. That is the beauty of it. Not that we cannot understand it, but that we are not supposed to!!

3:7 (Asad) He it is who has bestowed upon thee from on high this divine writ, containing messages that are clear in and by themselves - and these are the essence of the divine writ - as well as others that are allegorical. [5] Now those whose hearts are given to swerving from the truth go after that part of the divine writ [6] which has been expressed in allegory, seeking out [what is bound to create] confusion, [7] and seeking [to arrive at] its final meaning [in an arbitrary manner]; but none save God knows its final meaning. [8] Hence, those who are deeply rooted in knowledge say: "We believe in it; the whole [of the divine writ] is from our Sustainer - albeit none takes this to heart save those who are endowed with insight. -

Do not worry about that which is ambiguous. Worry only about that which is clear!! It is not that the Quran has suddenly become more ambiguous. What was clear 1400 years ago, remains clear even today.

Even if we were to consider 33:33 as one of the ambiguous ayahs then to dwell upon who they truly are and curse others based upon your own interpretation would squarely put you in the category of those specified in 3:7 - Now those whose hearts are given to swerving from the truth go after that part of the divine writ [6] which has been expressed in allegory

So, if you consider 33:33 as ambiguous, then stop talking about it. The identity of the Ahlul Bayt doesn't matter. And if it is a clear ayah, then it has to be the wives.

Here is the evidence of existence of God in the Quran in the words of br. porus himself.

Underlining what I say about people having little knowledge and pretending to be scholars. Take the last sentence in the above translation, 'This is the best , and best in the end'.

This translation completely ignores the subtleties in the last portion "wa ahsanu taweelan". The word "taweelan" is an adverb of specification, known as 'tameez'. To call it simply the 'end' without elaboration is to remain ignorant of its nuances.

As far as, prophecy is concerned, Allah says there will be Imams from only the righteous among the progeny of Ibrahim. and Prophets are also Imams in that they are leaders of the community.

But this discussion will not be fruitful with the two Wahhabis here.

First proof - the brilliance of the language with so many nuances that no translation can reproduce it. Even br. porus who knows about them, cannot reproduce them. No human translators have been able to reproduce them. Is there another book out there with such gems embedded within the use of grammar in its sentences? No!!

Second proof - Prophecies in the Quran. Br. porus' ulul amr are from the progeny of Ibrahim which has been prophesized in the Quran. With such beliefs, it is quite surprising that br. porus is still asking for proof that the Quran is from God. Very surprising indeed!!

ghulam muhammed wrote:
Al-Hakim was a man of contradictions. Although he was the leader of the heretical Ismaili branch of Shiism that most scholars of the day completely rejected, he opened up his domain to anyone who could benefit it. Al-Hakim invited Ibn al-Haytham to come to Egypt to attempt his radical idea to dam the Nile. After travelling down the Nile to see where a potential dam could be built, he realized his plan could not go into effect with the technology of the day. There happened to be one problem: al-Hakim was known to be act irrationally ruthless, and acted quite insane on occasion. In order to escape some kind of punishment, Ibn al-Haytham pretended to be even more insane than al-Hakim himself! This daring idea saved him from excecution, but placed him under house arrest in Cairo for the remainder of al-Hakim’s life – 10 years.

badrijanab wrote:ghulam muhammed wrote:
Al-Hakim was a man of contradictions. Although he was the leader of the heretical Ismaili branch of Shiism that most scholars of the day completely rejected, he opened up his domain to anyone who could benefit it. Al-Hakim invited Ibn al-Haytham to come to Egypt to attempt his radical idea to dam the Nile. After travelling down the Nile to see where a potential dam could be built, he realized his plan could not go into effect with the technology of the day. There happened to be one problem: al-Hakim was known to be act irrationally ruthless, and acted quite insane on occasion. In order to escape some kind of punishment, Ibn al-Haytham pretended to be even more insane than al-Hakim himself! This daring idea saved him from excecution, but placed him under house arrest in Cairo for the remainder of al-Hakim’s life – 10 years.

In your fist of frustration you start acting like a moron. The above quotes are not made by me but are excerpts from the site http://lostislamichistory.com/ibn-al-ha ... scientist/ so if you demand any action then do so against the writer after providing proofs from your "Pristine" books !!

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was a colossus among Muslim scholars. Stephen Frederic Dale gives us a portrait of this extraordinary man in his new intellectual biography, The Orange Trees of Marrakesh: Ibn Khaldun and the Science of Man (Harvard University Press, 2015). “Ibn Khaldun,” he writes, “created the world’s first known example of historical sociology, a philosophically inspired discipline commonly thought to have originated in Western Europe.”

Dale’s book stands out in the large library of books and studies about Ibn Khaldun for its sharp focus on the philosophical foundations of his work. Philosophy is at the heart of Ibn Khaldun’s method, according to Dale. He states that Ibn Khaldun “forcefully and repeatedly indicates he has adopted Greco-Islamic philosophical ideas and methodology to revolutionize historical research, which he then employs to produce a comprehensive study of North African Muslims in his era.”

Ibn Khaldun argued that the planting of decorative orange trees that produced inedible fruit (now perhaps termed “bitter oranges”), was one sign of dynastic senility. That is, when regimes became addicted to such useless luxuries, they were on the descending slope of the bell curve of the rise and fall of tribal states. Incidentally, I had early in my career, before reading Ibn Khaldun, visited Marrakesh when the orange trees were in blossom. The scent was heavenly, thus the irony.

Ibn Khaldun said he was reinventing the historical discipline by using Greco-Islamic philosophical ideas/categories, and logical methods of proof, most derived from Aristotle and Galen, to identify the nature of societies. By adopting Ibn Khaldun’s methodology Muslim historians could accurately explain the essence or natures of societies, which would allow them accurately to depict their historical trajectories. He borrowed these ideas from Aristotle’s physics, and his logical reasoning from Aristotle’s Organon. Most studies of Ibn Khaldun ignore this, although philosophical ideas and logical methods shape the Muqaddimah. It is impossible to understand Ibn Khaldun’s work or his ideas about religion and philosophy beyond a superficial level without explaining this.

Finally, I explain why Ibn Khaldun’s work so closely resembles the social theories of eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century European thinkers, such as Montesquieu, David Hume, Adam Smith and Émile Durkheim. The resemblance has often been noted, but never really explained. The similarity, I argue, is due to the fact that like Ibn Khaldun, these Europeans had philosophical training and asked the same questions about the nature of society and trajectory of history as he did. A specific intellectual link between Ibn Khaldun and European thinkers goes through Paris, where Thomas Aquinas studied the Aristotelian summaries of the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes), which were also later read by Ibn Khaldun, and even later in the sixteenth century by Scottish scholars and others at the University of Paris. Ibn Khaldun is thus a member of an intellectual lineage that begins with Plato and Aristotle, continues with Muslim rationalist scholars, and is revived by Europeans in the eighteenth century.

His “genius” consisted of offering a philosophical program for transforming history from a series of meaningless and usually sycophantic narratives into social analysis. He was the first scholar in any civilization to do so. Of course, almost no one paid any attention at the time. Only in the twentieth century Annales School was his vision of a philosophical historical discipline partially realized.

We can learn a great deal about the breadth of Arab Muslim culture in this age before the rise of the major early modern Muslim empires. A study of Ibn Khaldun’s summaries of knowledge and allusions to an entire galaxy of scholars points to the richness of this culture in the fourteenth century.

ibn khaldun can do that coz he was not a follower of stupid ibn taimiya.
these followers of ibn taimiya gloat over scholars of past and how we dont have any gud muslim scholars now.
but they conveniently forget all these scholars were not following their stupid ideologies and that is why they became scholars in first place.
and by todays standard they were kafirs and liable to be killed.

From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. There are 20 such inventions which changed the world.

1. The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian caffé and then English coffee.

2. The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.

3. A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe – where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century – and eastward as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.

4. A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn’t. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries. In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles’ feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing – concluding, correctly, that it was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.

5. Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade. But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders’ most striking characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash. Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed’s Indian Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV.

6. Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam’s foremost scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today – liquefaction, crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and filtration. As well as discovering sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the alembic still, giving the world intense rosewater and other perfumes and alcoholic spirits (although drinking them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.

7. The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al-Jazari to raise water for irrigation. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the combination lock.

8. Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China. But it certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the Crusaders’ metal armour and was an effective form of insulation – so much so that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain and Holland.

9. The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe’s Gothic cathedrals was an invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings. Other borrowings from Muslim genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques. Europe’s castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world’s – with arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily defended round ones. Henry V’s castle architect was a Muslim.

10. Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon. It was he who discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute strings) and that it can be also used to make medicine capsules. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a technique still used today.

11. The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to grind corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of Arabia, when the seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was the wind which blew steadily from one direction for months. Mills had six or 12 sails covered in fabric or palm leaves. It was 500 years before the first windmill was seen in Europe.

12. The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered it.

13. The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.

14. The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825. Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi’s book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much of whose contents are still in use. The work of Muslim maths scholars was imported into Europe 300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci. Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry came from the Muslim world. And Al-Kindi’s discovery of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of the ancient world soluble and created the basis of modern cryptology.

15. Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname of Ziryab (Blackbird) came from Iraq to Cordoba in the 9th century and brought with him the concept of the three-course meal – soup, followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments with rock crystal by Abbas ibn Firnas – see No 4).

16. Carpets were regarded as part of Paradise by medieval Muslims, thanks to their advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from Islamic chemistry and highly developed sense of pattern and arabesque which were the basis of Islam’s non-representational art. In contrast, Europe’s floors were distinctly earthly, not to say earthy, until Arabian and Persian carpets were introduced. In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were “covered in rushes, occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned”. Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.

17. The modern cheque comes from the Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.

18. By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that the Earth was a sphere. The proof, said astronomer Ibn Hazm, “is that the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth”. It was 500 years before that realisation dawned on Galileo. The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth’s circumference to be 40,253.4km – less than 200km out. The scholar al-Idrisi took a globe depicting the world to the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1139.

19. Though the Chinese invented saltpetre gunpowder, and used it in their fireworks, it was the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified using potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim incendiary devices terrified the Crusaders. By the 15th century they had invented both a rocket, which they called a “self-moving and combusting egg”, and a torpedo – a self-propelled pear-shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in enemy ships and then blew up.

20. Medieval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain. Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include the carnation and the tulip.